


If I Stay

by 1shouldbe_sleeping



Series: What His Violin Wrote [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bisexual John Watson, Denial of Feelings, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, M/M, Post-Mary shooting Sherlock, Pre-Appledore Shenanigans, References to Canon, Sherlock's Violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:35:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5791012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1shouldbe_sleeping/pseuds/1shouldbe_sleeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Is it 221b</i>, he asked himself, <i>or something else?</i> He sprang up and started pacing. <i>Keep telling yourself that it’s the apartment and not someone else, John.</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>His Last Vow: post-Mary shooting Sherlock, pre-Appledore</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Stay

One day it was seven hours without Mary. The next it was seven months without her. There were times it seemed like The Incident was only hours ago, and John would sit staring at the wall with a furrowed brow and white-knuckled fists; he would sit thinking of their entire relationship and wondering if he missed hints or ignored the signs that she was lying about who she was. Then Sherlock would burst into the room, billowing coat and upturned collar, eyes bright with wonder and lips singing songs of mysteries to be solved, and John would forget about The Incident. He would refit himself into the mold of John the Blogger and follow Sherlock with as much childish enthusiasm as he had the first day he met the Consulting Detective. Because it was comfortable. Because it made sense. It was those times that he would wake up the next day and realize that it had been weeks since he had seen Mary.

But seven months. Seven months without Mary, his _wife_ , the woman carrying his child – if she was actually carrying his child. _Should I even think that?_ he asked himself. He stared, yet again, at the wall of his old bedroom, questioning his marriage and his wife. It was then, as he always did when he thought of Mary, that he looked to his bedside table and stared at it. The memory stick. The door to more lies – or truths, rather. Truths about who Mary was. 

_Do I want to know?_

There was a part of him that wanted to know – why should he be kept in the dark a second longer? John was _always_ kept in the dark: he wasn’t allowed to know Sherlock was alive until he was staring him in the fake-mustached face; he wasn’t told that the bomb had a fucking _off-switch_ until he heard Sherlock’s laughter; he wasn’t told he was addicted to a certain lifestyle until his wife shot his best friend; he wasn’t told his wife was a bloody assassin until she was sitting across from him affirming that he should have known all along she was one, because _“it’s what you like.”_ Was it not about time he was given the truth? What did he owe her? These were the questions that would leave him glaring at a wall with a grimace.

Sherlock, once, caught John staring off into the abyss alongside him, and he stopped his own abyssal-staring to question John’s. “I thought I was the one who sat for hours on end in silence,” he mused, “not you.” He sat up and faced John. John’s stomach dropped. “Do we . . . do we need to . . . ?” His eyes shot rapidly from John’s face to the seat closest to him and back. 

John’s lip curled. “Christ, Sherlock,” he muttered, and he got up. He did not even know why; he just knew sitting and staring at Sherlock’s surprisingly open face was causing his muscles to coil like springs. He rummaged through the kitchen for the damn teabags and the damn kettle, but like his own life, things had changed inside 221b. He looked at Sherlock. _That’s not the only thing_. Sherlock, for once, was serious about sharing thoughts other than his own, and for a fleeting moment, John wanted to oblige. Sherlock had developed a softness since he got shot, leaving a wound bleeding with empathy, not bandaged for John’s sake. It made his skin crawl and his heart ache at the same time, for he _needed_ to talk, he knew he did.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Mrs. Hudson always seemed to know when an intimate moment between John and Sherlock arose. She waltzed in with her usual complaints about the mess and the dust; and all the while Sherlock recomposed himself into the dramatic and tortured soul of a man with too much on his mind, leaving John to wallow in his newly chinked armor and writhe with vulnerability.

John would have been fine if that was the only instance of openness shared between him and Sherlock since The Incident – but it wasn’t. In those seven months, it had happened too often for John to recount, and often enough for him to go queasy at the sight of Sherlock. Now when he thought of Mary, he thought of being vulnerable to Sherlock. John was always soft where Sherlock was concerned, but _this?_ John scoffed and turned over in his bed to put his back to the memory stick. _As if I don’t have enough to worry about_ , he bitterly thought. What he ought to be thinking about was what to say to Mary – because he knew he would have to face her eventually. He was not that stupid; he knew there was an ulterior motive to Sherlock’s uncharacteristic poking and prodding. 

_What in the hell will I say?_ he asked himself. Ire poked its head out and replied with, _Lying bitch; undeserving, untrustworthy, life-sucking bitch._ He could easily imagine telling her to fuck off, lest she wanted John to reveal the mysteries in the memory stick and let Magnusson have his way with her.

The soft caress of a violin broke him out of his rage. It came from downstairs, in the living room; John could see, in his mind’s eye, Sherlock at his perch with violin resting against his chin and his fingers dancing across its neck. It steadied his mind. Made him see sense, as the one playing the violin did.  
Even if John was free of the married life, he knew he could not find love again – not unless he wanted to marry another secret assassin or a criminal leading a double life. Mary was not supposed to be like that – he hoped that if he said it enough times it would change The Incident. He chose her because she was safe, a hope for domesticity, and a distraction from Sherlock’s loss. When Sherlock came back, he thought he found balance between his addiction to a dangerous lifestyle filled with murder mysteries and a safe home and wife to go to. But no, both Sherlock and Mary confirmed: he was doomed to find a partner who shoots his friend and lies to him.

With his new revelation fueling him, he set his mind to work thinking of what to say to Mary. It began with a warning that his wrath would plague them every now and again. Then it went on to say that her past . . . was her business. Did he want to dig through the memory stick? Did he want to know her past? _God, yes._ He tasted the desire on his tongue and felt the need bursting in his gut like a volcano. If he wanted to be with Mary – if he _had_ to be with Mary, if he was doomed to be with another person like her regardless – he needed to leave the secrets be. But with her past (momentarily) decided, what of their future?

John groaned and threw the covers off him. The lull of the violin was too loud for him now. Made his body hot and his skin crawl. How could he think about moving on from Mary when the familiar sounds of 221b were seducing him to stay?

_Is it 221b_ , he asked himself, _or something else?_ He sprang up and started pacing. _Keep telling yourself that it’s the apartment and not someone else, John._

He hit the wall. He hit it again. That perpetual struggle of his desires was like a poisonous cloud in the air mucking up his senses, like the mist of mind-altering chemicals in the moor of Dartmouth. This time, however, the hound was not a monster created by the scarred mind of a man gone mad, but a cry of “The game is on!” and the rush of adrenaline; it was an extended hand and the imminent threat of danger lurking around every corner. It was a bean-pole of a man with an overstuffed ego and a head of curly hair. He could never truly leave Sherlock behind. Even when John thought he was ready to move on and bury the memory of Sherlock alongside his rotting corpse, the detective resurrected himself and came back with a vengeance, as if to punish John for daring to let him go. John would be telling a filthy, blatant lie if he denied that one of his biggest reasons for lusting after a life without his lying wife was the nostalgia of a life with the man playing the violin upstairs.

John stopped thinking a moment listened. The aforementioned violin was no longer singing. Footsteps replaced its song. John scrambled to compose himself, but his realization came far too late, and a rap at the door made him jump out of his skin.

Then he heard the concerned tone of Mrs. Hudson and he let out a breath he did not know he was holding. “John, dear,” said Mrs. Hudson through the door, “you really ought to come out and have a cuppa, something – you’ll go mad in there all alone.”

_I’ve already gone mad,_ thought he, _so what is the point?_

“Mrs. Hudson, I’m not really feeling up to it –”

“Please, I’ll even make your favorite meal.” John’s stomach gave an unabashed rumble. “You know what I always say” – _“Not your housekeeper,”_ echoed her voice in John’s memory – “so take this offer before I change my mind.”

The violin continued its song – with his ear so close to the door, he could hear its tune, a shrill, near villainous distortion of one he’s heard before, he just couldn’t name it.  
His hand clenched and unclenched as he thought about what to do. Staying locked away in his old room allowed him to think in peace without having Sherlock’s open and inviting eyes tearing through his armor. Yet again, staying alone in his room gave him too much time to think, and too much silence in which to hear the irresistible sounds of 221b and the man so connected to it. His eyes combed his old room – his old, familiar, comfortable room, the one place he felt truly home these days – these seven months – and he sighed deeply. His eyes rested on the memory stick.

A cuppa, he decided, would do for now.

He opened the door to find Mrs. Hudson waiting patiently with arms hugged around herself and wide eyes hopeful. When John nodded with a forced grin, she made a restrained sound almost like a sob, and she placed her hand gently against his cheek. Down the stairs she went, but John did not immediately follow. He was listening to the violin’s song once more – it was beginning to nag at him that he could recognize the tune beneath its dying cry, but he failed to remember where he heard it. He felt like he ought to have known. He grabbed his robe from its perch and wrapped himself up as he went down the stairs with a furrowed brow. Whatever the violin’s song was, he knew the person playing it was another matter entirely, so he took his time going down the steps.

“I’ll bring it up to you, John, don’t you worry,” called Mrs. Hudson as she went down the next flight of stairs. She stopped at a step to look up at him. “You sit and wait with Sherlock” – John’s damaged heart gave a lurch, and he mentally cursed – “and I’ll make something for both of you. Heaven knows that man needs to eat before he disintegrates.” John gave a huff of a laugh in agreement, but his mind was elsewhere. He walked through the door to the living room.

And that’s when he recognized what song Sherlock was torturing to create its new version.

The power of sense memory thrust him back to a vision of Mary in white and the sepia tones of a reception hall. Her eyes were a tantalizing grey and her hands were warm and firm as they waltzed. The music . . . the music was composed by Sherlock, filled with delicate notes of a simple love song – but no wonder John couldn’t place it now, what with its death at the same fingers who brought it to life. The song then was composed with care, and played with gentle fingers; now, however, it was played with calloused, furious hands and a harsh bow that cut across the strings like a man slitting his victim’s throat.

How could he have forgotten what the song he danced to with his new wife sounded like? And how could he relate so well to the wrath that it now bled? Had seven months without Mary done this to him? Had the seven months he spent still reeling from The Incident left him so bitter that he preferred this new version of his wedding waltz to its original purity and innocence?

Before he could come to an answer, Sherlock sensed his presence, and the song died completely with an accidental screech and wide eyes from its killer. John could not tell – he could hardly tell where Sherlock was concerned – whether Sherlock’s wide eyes hinted at being caught red handedly murdering the waltz he created, or shock at there being another live body in the room. Either way, the look was gone far too soon for John to grasp its meaning, and Sherlock cleared his throat before shuffling the papers on his easel.

“Ah,” he said, “John.” Another cough. John’s fingers curled tightly into a fist. “Yes, well.”

_Say something_ , John thought. Was he commanding himself, or was he begging Sherlock to do so?

“A case, it seems, has popped up,” said he, and he used his violin bow to point to his laptop. “One of few worthy of my time. Violin helps me think on it.”

John said, “I know,” far too quickly, and he and Sherlock spent too many moments staring at each other in silence. Could this mean that Sherlock was, in fact, angrily playing John’s waltz, and was trying to shrug it off as nothing? Why? Was he worried what John would think? Because it ought to have been _John_ who worried about his thoughts – _and I am._

Sherlock finally nodded. “I know,” he said softly. It was a low rumble, the type that reverberated in John’s chest, made his fingertips go numb with – with whatever it was that he felt. He couldn’t put a name to it. Frankly, he didn’t want to.

John, before he let his thoughts go down the rabbit hole, fled to the kitchen to look for the kettle. Having been here long enough since Janine, Sherlock’s . . . not-girlfriend, John was able to stubbornly rearrange the kitchen back to its original controlled chaos. He found the electric kettle easily, as well as a cup – just one. _Sherlock can get his own, damn it._

“John,” called Sherlock, and John nearly dropped the mug. He composed himself but did not look at his companion – he had used that tone again, the one that was soft and inviting, far too gentle for Sherlock. It was the _you-need-to-talk-about-it tone._ This was not what he needed right now.

Yet Sherlock persisted: “John, perhaps, with me being on the mend” – John filled the kettle with water and set it on its perch to be heated, all without looking at Sherlock – “I could do this case. It’s the first one in months.” _Several months_. “I think . . .” With the electric kettle boiling at a rapid pace, John would not be able to use it as a scapegoat for long, and he forced himself to get it over with and look at Sherlock. The second he did was the same second Sherlock said, “I think it would be wise to have my doctor with me.”

_Bloody hell_ , John cursed. It was the same siren’s song, the same call for adventure that, when it came from Sherlock’s lips, never failed to make John’s heart leap with excitement, and his limbs ache for the chase. Combined with the newly found softness to Sherlock’s features, the openness and invitation of it all, John was cleaved in half. Dear _God_ did he want to work a case with Sherlock; he wanted to feel the pump of adrenaline in his veins and ignore the brokenness of his heart. He wanted the constant moving and rush of the speeding, derailed train that was a mystery with Sherlock, the one man he could hardly ever resist. 

But was that not the lifestyle to which he was addicted? Was this not an invitation to feed off the drug he hadn’t realized was his until The Incident? Did Sherlock know this and want to keep him hooked, to keep him dependent on the very thing that was slowly killing him? The worst part of it all was that John wanted to stay an addict.

“I need to leave,” he breathed.

Sherlock raised his brow. “What –”

“I need,” John panted, “to leave.” 

Sherlock blinked. “Leave?” he asked, as if he didn’t know what John meant. He wasn’t dumb; he was Sherlock fucking Holmes, for God’s sake, of course he knew what John meant. Yet still he asked just to hear John confirm it; he asked with eyes distant and closed, a juxtaposition of what they were only moments ago. 

John gulped, and with a painful finality he answered, “I _need_ to leave.” 

He walked past Sherlock and towards the stairs. The smell of food made him dizzy. His stomach gave a warning heave. Footsteps followed behind him but he chose to ignore them.

“John, I’m not going to stop you,” Sherlock called after him. I wish you could, John hopelessly thought. “But wait.” Because it was hard to deny Sherlock anything, John obliged. He just didn’t look at him; instead, he kept Sherlock at his back. “My parents are demanding that I come over for Christmas. I want you to come.” 

_Sherlock, please, let me go,_ John begged, and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the railings. _Let me let you go_ , he thought in a whisper, for he could hardly bear to think of it that way. 

“I’ll invite her,” Sherlock added. John’s heart stopped. His chest burned. “You can talk then. You’ll have time to think over what you want to say –”

“Oh, I’ve had plenty of time,” John muttered.

“Really _think_ , John, and you can work it out then. Because that’s what you want.” John’s ears rang. “I can see you’ve decided.”

John turned to look at his companion. _How can you when I don’t even know myself?_ John wanted to say, because he himself could hardly to admit to what he truly wanted. He had gone back and forth for years on it, and now he had no choice. It wasn’t a matter of what he wanted; it was a matter of what he was forced to do. He had only tricked himself into thinking it wasn’t what he had to do, hoping it would become what he wanted if he faked it long enough.

John once again turned his back. “Christmas is a week from now,” mumbled John. “I’ll stay until then. Afterwards . . .” He made his way up the stairs. “Afterwards we’ll see what happens. If I leave, or . . .”

“If you stay,” Sherlock finished.

_If I stay_ . . . John repeated, and he closed his bedroom door behind him.


End file.
